He believed that
the reason why incestuous unions were avoided and abhorred, was to be
found in the constant inculcation, at home and in literature, that
"They are unholy, hated of God, and most infamous....
Everyone from his earliest childhood has heard men
speaking in the same manner about them always and
everywhere, whether in comedy or in the graver language
of tragedy. When the poet introduces on the stage a
Thyestes or an Oedipus, or a Macareus having secret
intercourse with his sister, he represents him, when
found out, ready to kill himself as the penalty of his
sin." (_Laws,_ VIII., 838.)
Long before Plato another great "medicine man," Moses, saw the
necessity of enforcing a "taboo" against incest by the enactment of
special severe laws relating to intercourse between relatives; and
that there was no "instinct" against incest in his time is shown by
the fact that he deemed it necessary to make such circumstantial laws
for his own people, and by his specific testimony that "in all these
things the nations are defiled which I cast out from before you, and
the land is defiled." Regarding his motives in making such laws,
Milman has justly remarked (_H.J_., I., 220),
"The leading principle of these enactments was to
prohibit near marriage between those parties among
whom, by the usage of their society, early and frequent
intimacy was unavoidable and might lead to abuse.
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